FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Please List
“EXPRESSIONS”
RENEE BORKOW . HENRY COUPE . MAY DEVINEY.
KAT KING . KAZUO ISHIKAWA . BRUCE ROSENSUSAN SILLS . SHEILA SMITH . TOTO TAKAMORI
December 28 – January 15, 2022
Opening reception :Pending pandemic status
Chelsea: Viridian Artists Inc. is pleased to present an exhibition of recent art by RENEE BORKOW, HENRY COUPE, MAY DEVINEY, KAT KING, KAZUO ISHIKAWA, BRUCE ROSEN, SUSAN SILLS, SHEILA SMITH and TOTO TAKAMORI. The show runs from December 28–January 15, 2022 with an opening reception Thursday, January 6, 6–8PM. Because of ongoing pandemic developments, please check gallery website for reception status.
“EXPRESSIONS” is an exhibit gathering the art of outstanding Viridian Artists not having a solo exhibit this season. For each, we are sharing a small selection of their works, an appetizer for the solo show some will have in 2023 or 2024. The art of Bruce Rosen (1931-1996) and Henry Coupe (1924-2015), still speaks to us, as if each were still living among us and sharing the beauty & meanings expressed in their art.
Bruce Rosen, both a poet and a painter, first showed at Viridian in the 90’s though his career spanned three decades with exhibitions in New York City and the East End of Long Island. Joan Krawczyk, former art editor of The Paris Review, independent curator and former director of Viridian, wrote about Rosen’s art in a 1997 statement: “Rosen’s paintings, like the artist himself, are small and quiet, at first. They reveal themselves slowly. First the color, definite and infinite. Dry, matte surfaces, like a skin, are creased, scratched and scarred… It is as though we are seeing a passage of time and an accumulation of experience… The works mirror the artist whose life integrated the noble poetics of two languages, the written and the visual.”
At the time of the juried exhibit at Viridian in which Henry Coupe won Honorable Mention, he was 90 years old and had fallen into a coma, finally succumbing at the age of 91 in December of 2015. But his art is alive still and continues to show us portraits of people we will never meet, but that remind us of those we have known. Henry Coupe spent his life creating small paintings, most under 24”, executed in strong, simple strokes, of people in landscapes. His people are shown both alone and in small groups. Tiny in scale, his delicate oils are filled with feeling and speak of love, portraying life’s simplest and most important moments, shared with others or experienced in solitude.
Kathleen King employs a layered approach in these mixed media paintings by first fashioning small figurative models from plant detritus. She then photographs these models into compositions and further develops her fantastic subjects with painted passages of acrylic and oil over the digital print on canvas.
Sheila Smith’s newest series of collages were created from photos she has taken over the years. Combining various fragments of these photographs of all sorts of objects and scenes that she rejected as finished art, the artist has re-created her latest series into a mixed bag of collaged abstract imagery. A prolific artist whose art usually begins with photographs, Smith works in her contemporary Photoshop darkroom, continually altering her images digitally until she feels they have reached that decisive moment of acceptance.
Living in the suburbs of Tokyo with forests, mountains and nature nearby, Kazuo Ishikawa feels his senses stimulated and that nature enters his consciousness and his art. He feels that his task is to sense abstract information from nature and symbolize these unseen systems in his art. About his creative practice, the artist says that “I think art is a missing piece of myself and might be lost forever. Every day I try to enter this space to find it. Throughout the pandemics, I am galvanized against the tragedies of the world and my creative juices are stirred. I was reminded again that I cannot live without nature. In a forest, for example, all of my senses are stimulated and the surroundings are ever-changing.”
Susan Sills is most known for her wooden cutout paintings and portraits but for this exhibit she decided to show ink on paper drawings the artist makes without any pre-conceived notions of what she will draw. Coming from her sub-conscious and done freehand, she begins these automated drawings with chance being the guiding force behind each opening gesture that forms the final image that emerges.
Toto Takamori spends months creating his tiny 4x6 or 5x7 paintings. His paintings consist of layers and layers of oil paint, sometimes as many as 70 layers says the artist, but we must take his word for it. The paintings often take months to dry, but the wait is worth it.
About her creative process Renee Borkow says that “color is a major focus, along with line and shape, in my work. My images are mostly based on composition and the slowness or immediacy of the moment.” The artist has immersed herself in history starting with the Greek Gods & Goddesses and filled her works with images and words some might think possess traditional female associations – corsets, diamond rings, bows – things that at first glance are not considered necessarily strong but which have perhaps acted over the centuries as objects of sublimation of the female-ways to woo her and overpower her.
May DeViney is an artist who uses feminism and politics as a starting point for her art making by recreating conventional ideas with images that visually clarify her interpretation of their meanings. “Butcher Madonna” is part of a series of works envisioning the image of the Madonna – the “perfect woman”- as a modern woman with a modern profession, carrying on an ordinary life. Can a woman be judged by standards of perfection when faced with daily toil and struggle? In “Yet He Remained Unmoved” we are surrounded by major social and environmental concerns that can be overwhelming and emotionally draining and yet there are those who seem entirely oblivious to these concerns. It is dumbfounding that they are able to remain unmoved.